Chapter 48 Sariel
SARIEL
A s the grand island of Kaus steadily fell under the banner of Anaon, Sariel made a point of visiting each and every little town and village under his sway.
His stated reasons to his advisers and army leaders was building unity among the people and showing them he was not oblivious to their fears of offering their loyalty to a new king.
The true reason was his eternal search for the specific color that marked Isca’s reborn soul.
If he meditated at night, when the stars shone down upon him, he could expand his consciousness for hundreds of miles in all directions, seeking out that color, and whatever new life Isca had made for herself in her current incarnation.
In the little town of Creed’s Mill, Sariel found her.
“We are honored by your presence,” the town’s mayor said, bowing low as several other prominent landowners came to greet the arrival of Sariel’s group of soldiers and knights.
Creed’s Mill was along the northern border of a newly annexed province of Windshew, the transition largely bloodless.
Their former king wisely understood the tide he faced and relinquished his hold so that he kept large portions of land under his control as a lord.
“An honor I wish to share with as many of my people as I can,” Sariel said, smiling widely.
His mood could not be more jovial. At last, he had found her.
His search was at its end. “Do you mind if I walk about? I would see the water mill you are known for, as well as the people whose work and sweat keep it running.”
“Of course, of course,” the mayor said, both flattered and proud of their namesake. “Shall I accompany you to explain its inner workings?”
“No, thank you,” Sariel said. “I will be fine on my own. If you might instead work on finding accommodations for my escorts here? We have spent many nights underneath the stars, and we would greatly appreciate some warm beds.”
With that, Sariel had his privacy. He pretended to wander, but that vibrant soul color was a beacon to him, and he followed it closer to the mill on the eastern side of the town. He found her just outside, loading bagged flour onto a cart for transport.
Her hair was a reddish brown this time, hanging down past her waist and tied behind her with several thick ribbons.
Her nose was small, like a rabbit’s. Her eyes were a different hue than the last few incarnations, this time a dark green that reminded him of cave moss.
If he were to guess her age, she was just approaching her twentieth year.
Unmarried, he hoped, for it complicated matters greatly otherwise.
She eyed him warily as she shouted something to the miller inside, and he wondered if she knew him. Not who he was fully, not the truth of their couplings across dozens of lives, but if she knew him as King Sytha of Anaon.
Perhaps he would remind her, once she was his queen.
Perhaps not. It was always a risk, laying his hands upon her and drawing out the memories of her past lives.
Sometimes it allowed them to resume their marriage as if the decades between were nothing.
Sometimes it broke her mind and ruined whatever love might have bloomed.
“Hello there,” he said. “Such hard work seems unbecoming of one so beautiful.”
“Being pretty don’t put food on the table,” she said. “At least not in a place so small as Creed’s Mill.”
“Then perhaps you were not meant to live in a place so small?”
The woman arched one of her eyebrows, and she seemed momentarily uncertain of his motivations.
“Can I help you with something, my liege?”
“I wish merely to exchange words with a pretty lady,” he said.
“Twice now you’ve called me pretty.” She stretched her back, wiping her hands on an apron as she did. “Say it a third time and I might begin to believe you mean it.”
Sariel beamed a smile in her direction. She had wit, and enough confidence to talk back to her own king. He couldn’t be more pleased. Though her appearance was always different, and the different upbringings resulted in many changes large and small, her personality was always familiar.
“May I have your name first, before I make such a commitment?”
“Agnes,” she answered after a moment’s hesitation.
“Well then, Agnes,” he said, and offered her the crook of his arm. “Might you be my lovely guide this evening through your quaint little corner of Windshew?”
“Beautiful, pretty, and now lovely,” she said. “I change my mind, I don’t believe it at all. You lay it on thicker than swamp mud. What is it you’re after, my liege? Perhaps you might even have it, if you ask honestly. You’re handsome enough.”
Sariel’s smile could not be truer.
“I would spend my day in the company of one whose tongue is sharper than a sword and whose mind is as quick as a fox,” he said. “Consider your beauty a lovely diversion for my eyes as we speak.”
At last, she returned his smile. She awkwardly joined him, standing at his side, and after a pause, she slid her arm through his. Sariel’s insides warmed as he once more felt the touch of his precious Isca.
“All right,” she said. “But not for long. I have work to do, and you’re keeping me from it.”
“Of course,” he said as they walked arm in arm beside the river that ran alongside the mill. “Not for long at all, I swear.”
The wedding was held a month later, a joyous affair in the grand promenade of Cevenne.
The people showered the streets with rose petals and told and retold the story of how a mere common maiden had stolen the heart of King Sytha.
It was a tale Sariel himself dictated to the bards and ordered them to sing as if it were their own construction.
“A fine enough ceremony,” Eder said as the two of them drank during the raucous after-party.
Tables filled the city square, loaded with carved turkeys, split potatoes, and bread layered with more honey than sense dictated.
No wine, though, a prelude to the coming cleansing laws Sariel would enact when his kingdom was fully established.
A troupe of five men and women sang bawdy songs while two more played on five-stringed lutes.
“Agnes deserves the best,” Sariel said, watching her dance in the center of the square.
Blue ribbons fluttered in her hair, matching the color of her dress.
Unlike the currently favored trends, Sariel had styled her dress after the one she wore at their very first wedding centuries ago.
Slender shoulders instead of poofy, with much of her back exposed, while the dress furled out near her feet, expanded with layers of additional white and silver silks.
A silver pendant hung from her neck, and the sapphire set within it gleamed in the light.
Agnes had brought several friends from her home in Creed’s Mill, and they surrounded her, laughing and clapping as they sang along with the troupe.
“Even in wartime?” Eder asked, and sipped at his water. He had made the journey to witness the wedding, though his troops remained on the distant front line in their current war against Orlea.
“Especially in wartime.”
A lord approached their table, drink in hand and a grand smile on his face, but Sariel waved him away. He wished for privacy with his brother, there in that little corner of Cevenne.
“This is the grandest accomplishment of our long existence,” Sariel continued.
“With the establishment of my kingdom, we will finally corral humans into better lives, whether they wish for them or not. Of course I shall have Isca with me, to be queen at my side amid a reign that shall span decades and shape the future of all of Kaus.”
Eder watched the woman dance, his gaze unreadable.
“I pray for joy, for the both of you,” he said. “But will people accept her? You have swept her up from very humble beginnings.”
“The people will accept the romanticized stories I tell. It will do, in lieu of the truth.”
“The truth,” Eder said, shaking his head. “You are a sentimental sort, Sariel, even if you pretend otherwise.”
Sariel laughed, and he lifted his glass in a toast.
“Is there a better time to be sentimental than at one’s own wedding?” he asked.
Eder returned the toast.
“To the destruction of Orlea,” he said.
“And the creation of my perfect kingdom,” Sariel said, and drank.